Some people embrace happy memories of their lives toward the end, if only to validate for themselves a happy life; others do not. Tolstoy was (by reports) uncommonly bitter toward his end. I forget why - I think his failed marriage was part of it. I wonder what Tolstoy thought of Pushkin?

"No novelists any good except me. Sovietski-- yah! Nastikoff-- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P.G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me."

Warden Number 6. One of the many reason , Chejov is the greatest writter ever of short stories.traditionalguy is right. That has been always my theory. The british social prejudice is the only reason for the mistery about Shakespeare. They cant stand a commoner being the more important writter of their language.

Tolstoy hated Shakespeare's lack of "realism" and made an example of King Lear. Orwell wrote a great little essay on this, pointing out the curious resemblance between Tolstoy's last days and Lear's.

Shaw was another who thought Shakespeare's plays shoddy. And by Shavian standards, perhaps they were poorly constructed and unrealistic. On the other hand, someone who found Richard II difficult to take seriously was likely to have a morals inadequate to 20'th century barbarism, and so it proved with Shaw.

War and Peace is a goddamned soap opera from beginning to end. I read it in high school, and I just didn't get why it had such a lofty reputation. At the time I figured it was my fault, that I was callow and that I was missing the Great Truth, but as the years have rolled by I have come to realize that all it is is a goddamned soap opera. Give me Chekhov any day.

I have to agree with Tolstoy that most of Shakespeare's plots are absurd and his characters unrealistic.

Lets see: A Danish King is killed by his brother, who then marries his wife. Appearing as a Ghost the dead King gets his son to avenge him. After a suicide and a couple murders, the King, Queen, Dead Kings son, and a couple others poison and kill each other. The end.

"No novelists any good except me. Sovietski-- yah! Nastikoff-- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P.G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me."

--P.G. Wodehouse, "The Clicking of Cuthbert"

"It's just the kind of book I like. It's gay. It's amusing. It's riskay, but not too riskay. Reminded me a little of Evelyn Waugh. And it's about human beings like you meet on the train every morning coming in from Great Neck and not a bunch of blasted sharecroppers getting all persecuted down in Alabama or somewhere. If you knew ... how many novels about persecuted sharecroppers I have to read every year, you'd shudder."

At the finale of a Shakespeare's tragedy, all conflicts are resolved, every evil deed is punished, every moral question is answered and everyone is dead. Because to the Bard that is the ultimate destiny- the grave, and if death takes us unjustly it will also take the unjust who put us there.

At the finale of a Chekhov tragedy, all conflicts remain unsolved, the characters settle for walking out their days with the situations as they are- sometimes with despair, and unhappiness, or bitterness, or maybe with hope, even if we know it to be false or foolish hope. But everyone is alive.

And that is why I always leave a Chekhov play with a optimism that grows on me from the curtain call till days later. Life affirming means that Life is Affirmed.

Shakespeare's plots are absurd and his characters unrealistic. There are no such thing. Every plot was taken from other author. Hamlet from Gesta Danorum, end of third book beginning of fourth. Caesar copied from Plutarcus.At the finale of a Chekhov tragedy, ...like the SopranosBTW: Chejov best work are his short histories